


dire straits

by theundiagnosable



Series: cccu [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Hockey, M/M, but like. hockey as a spectre of your looming self esteem issues and toxic ex, summer? nostalgia? music? the trauma of childhood friendship?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25519453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theundiagnosable/pseuds/theundiagnosable
Summary: Mikey’s not proud of his reaction, for the record. It’s not like he thinks it through, more like fight or flight instinct. Possibly leaning more flight than fight.All of which is to say, basically, that he hears Kyle, panics, and dives headfirst through the nearest door. It turns out to be a closet, because Mikey’s life is just eight million consecutive layers of irony, and also occupied, because of course it is.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: cccu [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1484207
Comments: 30
Kudos: 125





	dire straits

**Author's Note:**

> \- the fun thing about fleeting summer romances is that with time they become fond memories and convenient fodder for getting through writer's block   
>  \- warning for a pov character saying/thinking cruel things about himself and (on a couple occasions) his weight

People never used to do the full name thing, before Kyle got famous. Mikey called him Kyle or sometimes Ky, and the boys called him Petey, and his mom called him Bugaboo and Kyle sat on Mikey’s chest and pinned him ‘til he swore on his life never to tell anyone.

No one calls Kyle any of that stuff anymore, at least not to Mikey. It’s always Kyle Peters, first and last, ever since he made the show.

Mikey’s not sure if it really happens as often as he thinks, people talking about Kyle. Not sure if he’s really hearing it everywhere or if he’s just hypersensitive to it, tuned in like a satellite dish to the exact frequency of Kyle’s name. Picking it up where it’s got no business being.

Case in point:

Mikey’s at this Canada Day party, right, this packed-house, loud-music, ‘no one really knows each other or cares about patriotism but we’re mostly too drunk to care’ thing at Albert’s house. And, see, this holiday is bullshit and Albert and his rich-ass family are minimally interesting to Mikey, frankly, but said rich-ass family also provides free beer, and Mikey’s alternative was lurking around his parents’ party with the neighbours and fending off questions about why he decided to stop playing, as if deciding had anything to do with anything, so-

Free beer. He’s here. He’s in the kitchen, more specifically, grabbing a new beer from the mass of them on the countertop, and then he apparently missed a memo somewhere, ‘cause everyone in the house tramples through the kitchen all at once, stampeding into the living room, talking indistinctly.

“Jesus,” Mikey says, pressing himself back against the counter – it doesn’t do shit, he’s too big for it to do shit – and trying to squeeze past the newly arrived crowd without spilling his beer, and then he hears someone chattering, all excited, “Can you believe he actually came, this is _so_ awesome,” and Mikey just impossibly but absolutely without a shred of doubt _knows_ right then and there, gets this sinking feeling like his stomach’s dropping anvil-style into the centre of the earth.

“-did you see against the Leafs, he literally deked out the entire team-”

“-Kyle Peters brought a _keg_ , what a fucking legend-”

Shit.

_Shit._

“Shit,” Mikey says, and no one even pays a little bit of attention to him. He feels sick, honest to goodness sick, all clammy like after scary movies when he was too little for them and watching them anyways. Same feeling as that, cause and effect: People start with the Kyle Peters stuff, Mikey puts two and two together, and fuck that very much, essentially, so he pushes his way into the hall, intent on getting the hell out.

He barely makes it five feet before he hears Kyle’s voice right around the corner, heading his way.

Mikey’s not proud of his reaction, for the record. It’s not like he thinks it through, more like fight or flight instinct. Possibly leaning more flight than fight.

All of which is to say, basically, that he hears Kyle, panics, and dives headfirst through the nearest door. It turns out to be a closet, because Mikey’s life is just eight million consecutive layers of irony, and also occupied, because of course it is.

“What are- _ow_.” The closet’s occupant grunts as Mikey trips over him, his beer spilling out lukewarm over his hand. Mikey ignores him, shuts the door behind his back and stays pressed against it. The noise from the hall, Kyle-related and otherwise, is muffled as he looks around and tries to adjust to the barely-there light.

“Did- is this beer? Seriously?” Closet Guy demands, staring up at Mikey and looking somewhere between disgusted and annoyed. Understandable, considering most of the contents of Mikey’s beer are currently dripping down his shirt.

He’s not someone Mikey recognizes from when he was in school; not from around the neighbourhood, either. Just this lanky kid, sitting all folded up next to a shoe rack. His hair’s real floppy, practically falling into his face except where it’s pushed back by his headphones, which are connected to – and Mikey does a double take, here – a Walkman.

“Sorry,” Mikey says, belatedly. “It’ll dry.”

Closet Guy sighs like Mikey’s just the most absolutely unimaginable dumbass, straightens his headphones, and closes his eyes.

Mikey shoves a coat hanger out of his face. His heart’s still racing. His brain keeps supplying all these awful fucking images of Kyle for some reason opening the closet and finding him and making that _face_ , the exact face that Mikey knows he’d make, the kind where this is some poor sucker they’re going to laugh about later.

“Why are you-” Mikey starts, and Closet Guy opens his eyes like _you’re fucking with me_ , so Mikey changes tack. “I’m Michael.”

“Same,” the kid says, like that’s a normal response, and Mikey blinks.

“You’re Michael too?”

“Mikhail,” not-Michael corrects. “K-H-A-I-L.” 

“Ethnic Michael,” Mikey says, without really thinking, and now it’s Mikhail’s turn to blink, slow.

“Sure, ethnic Michael.”

The silence is distinctly awkward. More than normal. Maybe awkward is amplified in tight spaces.

“Sorry,” Mikey says, eventually. Second time’s the charm. “Was that, like, rude, or-”

“If I’m picking things to dislike you for, spilling beer on me probably ranks higher,” Mikhail points out, which is a fair point that has the probably unintended – maybe unintended? – side effect of making Mikey feel like more of an idiot than usual, so he toys with the tab on his beer can and tries to muster up a comeback.

“Why the walkman?” is what he settles on, eventually, and Mikhail shrugs.

“Sound quality.”

“Right,” Mikey says, skeptical, and forgets that he’s supposed to be feeling guilty. Fucking sound quality, give him a break. “So you’re a hipster, basically.”

“Hipsters listen to vinyl,” Mikhail corrects.

“Yeah, but you can’t carry, like, a huge record around.”

“Maybe if you were committed enough to the aesthetic.”

Mikey doesn’t mean to grin. Does, anyways. “And what aesthetic is that, exactly, ethnic Michael?”

“Oh, you know,” Mikhail says, still bitchy as anything, but Mikey gets the feeling he’s playing along. “Pretentious-”

“Dickbag?” Mikey suggests.

Now Mikhail grins, confirming Mikey’s suspicions. “Pretentious dickbag, yes, exactly where I was going.”

“As opposed to the walkman, which is-”

“Not that,” Mikhail finishes.

“Course.” 

It’s nice, then, in that weird, hesitant way that laughing with a stranger is always kind of nice. Like eye contact on the subway when something dumb happens.

“At least you’re self-aware, I guess,” Mikey says, and Mikhail rolls his eyes, tucks his legs closer. It makes room on the floor of the closet. Mikey takes it as an invitation, sits down and tries to fold himself into the space between the shoe racks. He keeps toying with the tab on his beer can, just for something to do with his hands.

Mikhail slides his headphones back. He’s got big ears. “What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” he asks, dry. Almost kind of suave, if he wasn’t so awkward and gangly.

“I wasn’t hiding,” Mikey lies, fast. Not well, evidently, because Mikhail looks bemused.

“Not what I was going to guess, but okay,” he says. “Who were you hiding from?” 

“Who’re _you_ hiding from?” Mikey retorts. Fuckin’- argumentative genius, Michael, you dumbass. Only then-

“Kyle Peters,” Mikhail answers, without missing a beat.

Mikey stares. “Why?” His first, absurd thought is that he’s getting fucked with, and his second thought is _him too?,_ like this random guy also got ditched by Kyle, like that’s a thing that happens to multiple people.

That’s not what happened. Obviously.

“He literally shoved me in a locker my first day of high school,” Mikhail says, matter-of-fact. “He’s like a poorly-written parody of a jock in a movie.”

And it’s weird, because it’s not like this guy’s accusing Mikey of anything, not like Mikey’s ever actually pushed someone into a locker, but it puts this guilty, unpleasantly twisting feeling into his stomach anyways, because he instantly knows that Mikhail’s telling the truth. Kyle’s- like, he’s a dick, kind of, he was even back when they were best friends, but he’s good enough at shit to kind of justify it. Unreal good.

It was just him being funny, usually.

“So?” Mikhail asks, and Mikey starts.

“So what?” he asks, maybe more defensive than is strictly necessary. Mikhail doesn’t know he and Kyle were friends. No chance Mikey’s going to be the one to tell him, he doesn’t need to be guilty of locker shoving by proxy, or whatever.

“So who are you hiding from?” Mikhail prompts, and he holds Mikey’s gaze, all searching. He has owl eyes. Real starey. Probably why he got shoved in a locker. 

“Everyone,” Mikey says, and finally breaks off the tab of his beer, flicks it into the corner where it hits against the wall with a tinny clink. “Wanna leave?” he asks, on a whim.

“This closet?”

“This party,” Mikey says, because if there’s any time for recklessness, it’s tonight. “Fuck Kyle Peters.”

Mikhail cracks a smile. The enemy of my enemy, or whatever. “Alright,” he says, and when Mikey offers a hand to pull him up, he takes it.

No one notices them leaving the party, or cares even if they do. The music from the house is still audible from outside, quiet enough that Mikey can hear the sound of his footsteps on the sprinkler-soaked sidewalk, sparkly in the streetlights as Mikhail follows him down the street to where Mikey parked his mom’s old Honda. He’s pretty sure the car’s older than he is. Approximately as ass-ugly. Probably more functional.

“Nice wheels,” Mikhail deadpans, real sarcastic.

“Nice walkman,” Mikey shoots back, and it makes Mikhail do that smile again, the barbed-wire-spiky one like he was secretly hoping for Mikey to say something mean back. It’s kind of refreshing. Mikey hasn’t been able to properly give anyone shit in a while.

He digs in his pocket for his keys, and Mikhail has an opinion on that, too.

“Don’t drink and drive,” Mikhail says, like some fucking MADD commercial.

“That was only my second beer, I didn’t even finish,” Mikey says. He’s not _that_ stupid.

“The one I’m wearing, you mean?” Mikhail asks, and Mikey flips him off, but when he unlocks the car, he walks around to the back instead of to the driver’s seat, pops the trunk and rifles through his gym bag. Lots of time for weights and shit, now that he doesn’t have homework or hockey.

“Here,” he says, tossing a wadded up t-shirt at Mikhail’s chest. “It’s clean.”

“It could fit three of me,” Mikhail says, and he’s not wrong, but it’s that or keep wearing most of a bud light, so he shrugs out of his jacket one sleeve at a time, then tugs off his beer-y shirt, right there in the street.

Mikey watches, a little – Mikhail’s skinny, like, counting ribs skinny, and he’s got freckles speckling up and down his chest – then, before he gets caught, busies himself with sliding into the driver’s seat, starting the car and blasting the AC so they don’t melt in the heat. Stuff like that. 

It doesn’t occur to him to feel self-conscious until Mikhail’s opening the door and folding himself into the passenger seat. He has to push stuff out of the way to do it, a crumpled-up Tim’s bag on the seat and Mikey’s stack of thrifted CDs that he has to lug around because the car doesn’t have an aux cord.

Mikey watches silently as Mikhail shuffles through the CD cases. “Best of the Dire Straits,” he reads, then raises his eyebrows at Mikey. “And _I’m_ a hipster?” 

Mikey snatches the case from his hand. “CDs aren’t hipster.”

“You’re right, they’re just kind of old,” Mikhail says, and tries to snatch the CD back, but Mikey’s too fast for him. "I was more judging you about the band.”

“Shut the fuck up, they’re good,” Mikey says; then, when Mikhail doesn’t look convinced, he jams the CD into the player in the dash and cranks up the volume. “They’re _good_.”

The song starts playing – _So Far Away_ , fucking classic, thank you very much – and for a few moments, neither of them speaks, just listening. Maybe processing their Kyle Peters-related near death experience. Mikey leans back, staring out the sunroof, and it takes him a while to realize that Mikhail’s laughing, near-silently.

“What?” Mikey demands, defensive.

“I kind of assumed you were bringing me out here to make out,” Mikhail gets out, through giggles. Fucking _giggles_.

“I wasn’t,” Mikey says; but, because he’s a nineteen year old failure and it’s not like make out prospects are exactly lining up down the block, “D’you want to?”

“Not with this song playing,” Mikhail says, all bratty, before he falls apart giggling again. And it’s weird- he’s laughing at Mikey, but it doesn’t feel like getting made fun of, really, or at least not in a dickish way. Wasn’t a dickish kind of no either, to the making out thing, and Mikey briefly wonders if changing the song is on the table, if it means making out, but before he can offer, Mikhail’s hiccoughing himself into silence, arching back into his seat, copying Mikey, and grinning up at the sky.

“How do you know Albert?”

“Played together,” Mikey says. “Hockey.” He wonders belatedly if he should’ve lied; waits a little tensely to see if Mikhail will make the connection with Kyle and the hockey thing, but he doesn’t, or doesn’t say anything if he does, just kind of nods.

“Rich kid sport,” he says, all wise. 

‘Fuck off,” Mikey says, less wise, but significantly more enthusiastically. “How do you know him?”

Mikhail makes a face. “My mom nannies for his little brothers,” he says. “She made me come tonight ‘cause Ms. Ng told her I was invited.” He does this higher-pitched voice, with an accent. “’You need more friends, Misha.’”

“Misha?” 

“Ethnic Mikey,” Mikhail says, half explanation and half sarcasm, and it takes Mikey a second to realize he’s joking around. He feels half a beat behind, the way he has since crashing into Mikhail in the closet. The guy seems smart. Not just smarter than Mikey, ‘cause that doesn’t take much, but actual smart.

“So your solution to needing more friends was to hide in your closet with your cassette player?” Mikey asks, instead of trying to get smart. He’s not one for lost causes.

“That’s how come I need more friends, stuff like that,” Mikhail-slash-Misha says, quick. Like he wants to say it before Mikey will. “And better people skills, probably.”

“Probably,” is all Mikey says; then, shifting the car into drive, because he probably needs both those things too, “McDonalds?”

\---

Mikey feels sort of bad for the poor suckers working at the twenty-four hour McDonalds in the big plaza on a national holiday, but not bad enough that he doesn’t order a large fries and a couple ice cream sundaes and bring them over to where Misha’s sitting in a booth by the window. The table’s sort of grody, the way McDonalds’ tables usually are, and the plasticky material of the seat feels like it’s sticking to Mikey’s pants. The oldies station is playing on the radio.

There are only a couple other people scattered throughout the place. Misha talks freely. Mikey gets the feeling he would, regardless.

“-and it’s really garbage what the school board is doing, because comp sci is mandatory for half the stuff I want to apply to but the only time they offer it conflicts with calc, so now I had to take it in summer school which was just, y’know, deeply terrible,” he says. “Public school, right?”

“School in general,” Mikey agrees, then, “You’re in my sister’s grade. You know Sabrina?”

Misha looks like he’s thinking about it, digging into the fries. “She does morning announcements, right?” he asks, after a second; then, when Mikey nods, “You guys are related?” He sounds skeptical. Can’t blame him.

“Yeah, that’s generally how siblings work,” Mikey says, real dry, so he probably deserves it when Misha retorts, quick,

“She’s a lot friendlier than you.” 

“Smarter, too,” Mikey agrees gamely enough, because it’s the truth, Sab got the good genes and he got curly hair and mediocre at hockey and bad taste in friends and fuck all else.

Misha drowns a fry in vinegar like it’s something that requires a lot of focus. “You graduated last year?”

Mikey nods. Watches with mild revulsion as Misha dips the exact same fry, the vinegar-soaked one, into his ice cream. Mikey’s eating oversalted fries on Canada Day with a freak with no taste buds. “Where are you going to school?” 

This fucking question.

“I’m not,” Mikey says, blunt. He spends his life easing people into this conversation. “I got an apprenticeship, for plumbing.” 

Misha’s less obvious about his reaction than most people are, at least. “That’s cool.”

Mikey makes himself grin, all teeth. “You don’t have to lie.” 

“I wasn’t lying,” Misha lies.

“Your ambition in life is to be a plumber, Misha?” Mikey lays it on real thick, nickname and everything, and Misha looks suitably abashed. So- fuck it. Mikey’ll take the wins when he can get them, way his life’s been, recently.

“No, you’re definitely on the honour roll,” Mikey decides, half to push the conversation away from himself and half because he knows he’s right. “Straight As, doesn’t talk in class. Never even had detention?” 

“I got detention once,” Misha argues.

“Was it in elementary school?” Mikey asks, and he’s being a shit, but Misha doesn’t respond, and Mikey can’t not smile, for real this time, thrilled. “It was in elementary school, wasn’t it?” 

Misha throws an ice-cream-and-vinegar-covered fry at Mikey’s chest. Probably fair, payback for the beer.

Mikey smudges at the new mark on his shirt. “What about you, what’re you gonna study after grad?”

“I applied for physics at Mac,” Misha says. His answer sounds just as practiced as Mikey’s, ‘cause it’s the kind of question you learn how to answer pretty much by rote, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two. “Eng phys at Waterloo and Toronto.”

“Ah,” Mikey says. “Sounds terrible.”

“It’s awesome,” Misha says, and it sort of throws Mikey how fervent he says it, for once dropping the monotone dry irony thing that he’s been keeping up so far. “It’s everything, it’s- you like music, right? Dire Straits?”

“I like other music too,” Mikey grumbles, and Misha waves him off.

“Okay, but, like, you know how light has both particle and wave-like properties?”

“Oh, for sure,” Mikey says, and Misha either doesn’t get the sarcasm or ignores it, because he keeps talking, as enthusiastic as Mikey’s heard him all night.

“If you go down to a small enough scale, that’s the same as everything,” he says. “Like – sound, as we perceive it, is just particles moving around at different frequencies. It’s a physical thing. Your music _exists_. It interacts with the universe.” He practically bounces in his seat. “Isn’t that the coolest thing ever?”

Mikey doesn’t know if he’s endeared or feels like he’s back in a class he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t know how those two feelings can be compatible.

He opts for saying, “If talking about science shit is your big move to get me to make out with you-”

“Oh my god,” Misha goes kind of red, like Mikey was aiming for, and kicks him under the table, but he’s smiling and not talking about physics shit anymore, which is also what Mikey was aiming for.

“I’m just saying,” Mikey shrugs, a little proud of himself, and he doesn’t really mean to catch Misha’s eyes, but he does, and there’s a beat before they both look away.

“Thanks for the ice cream,” Misha says, kind of out of nowhere.

“Yeah,” Mikey says, and kicks Misha under the table so they’ll be even. Their toes stay touching. Maybe by accident. Maybe not.

The song that’s been playing over the radio hits some kind of crescendo, this old school guitar solo. It fills up the spaces in the conversation, the lulls in the rest of the customers’ quiet voices, and Misha’s nodding his head to it like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. It makes his floppy hair even messier. It’s cute.

“You know this song?” Mikey asks.

“Why?” 

“You’re dancing, Walkman,” Mikey says, then, because Misha goes still, and Mikey didn’t mean to make him do that, he adds, “Plus it just sounds hipsterish and old as balls, so-”

“Again, CD player, you can’t fucking talk,” Misha says, switchblade fast, back to snippy closet boy instead of gushy science nerd.

“So you don’t know the song?” Mikey pushes, and Misha holds out a solid four seconds before relenting.

“It’s The Velvet Underground.”

“Holy fuckin’ shit,” Mikey cackles, because he was honestly mostly joking. He likes the way Misha’s blush goes right to his Dumbo ears.

“Shut up, it’s good,” Misha says, and he’s laughing too, and it’s not a kick as much as it’s a touch, companionable, when he slots his foot between Mikey’s ankles, and Mikey crosses his feet to get him to stay there, and he does, the whole rest of the song, even goes back to nodding his head as they listen together, until the guitar fades out and the radio DJ’s obnoxious voice reappears.

Mikey scrapes up one last spoonful of melty ice cream and peanuts and chocolate sauce. He can feel Misha watching him.

“There’s this song you’d like,” he says, since being impulsive has gone okay tonight, so far. “Ground patrol.”

“What?”

“It’s cool,” Mikey says. “It’s like, really obscure, very hipster, very outer space. Very you.”

“That description is incredibly in-line with my self-perception,” Misha says, straight-faced enough that Mikey can’t tell what the joke is or even if he’s joking at all, so he just powers through.

“My parents have it on tape,” he says. “Like, in my basement somewhere.” 

Misha’s leg kind of jumps where it’s still touching Mikey’s. Static-shock style. “You’re inviting me to your house?” he asks, and now, now Mikey can tell he’s teasing. “Now who’s trying to make a big move?”

“It working?” Mikey shoots back, raising an eyebrow.

Misha narrows his eyes at him, real appraising. “I want to pick the music in the car.”

“Fat fucking chance,” Mikey informs him, and they hold each other’s gaze for the space of a second-long staring contest before they’re both surging out of their seats in the same moment, like a wire sparking, and the positive thing about being in a mostly deserted McDonalds at night on Canada Day – Canada Night? – is that none of the workers give enough of a shit to tell them to throw out their trash or slow down as they sprint for the car, tugging and shoving at each other to get ahead.

It's been a while since Mikey laughed like he’s laughing when he collapses into the front seat. His ribs hurt. That kind of laughing.

“Un-fucking-fair,” Misha pants, next to him, but he’s laughing too, the too-big collar of Mikey’s too-big shirt hanging loose so Mikey gets a glimpse of freckles again when he glances over.

The Dire Straits start up again when Mikey starts the car, and it makes him jump, and he doesn’t let himself look over again until they’re well on the way.

He won the race to the car, zero doubt, but he lets Misha pick the music anyways. Nice gesture, but also a deeply fucking terrible one, because it means that they end up listening to some more godawful hipster music the whole drive to Mikey’s place, where they’re only going so they can listen to _more_ godawful hipster music.

Mikey is questioning some of his choices. Nothing new, he thinks, dry.

If Misha thought the invitation to Mikey’s place was actually an unsubtle attempt at making a move, he probably figures out pretty quick that it’s not: the driveway is full and the house even fuller, crowded with middle-aged neighbours and family members. The barbecue’s going, a herd of dads just barely visible through the sliding doors, and Mikey gets approximately a dozen affectionate back slaps from his parents’ friends within ten seconds of coming through the door.

“Oh, gross, this is an actual party,” Misha says, hushed, and then, because the universe is truly and very apparently conspiring against Mikey, his mom swoops in, dressed thematically in a bright red dress.

“Who’s this, Mike?”

“Misha. Friend from school,” he says, and it’s only technically a lie, and infinitely better than ‘a high schooler I met at a party’ like, an hour and a half ago.

Misha waves, only a little awkward. Mikey’s mom is staring, and being obvious about it too. Mikey sort of gets why – Misha doesn’t look like most of the friends Mikey has had and lost touch with, guys from teams or the gym or shit like that. Mikey wouldn’t bet money on Misha ever having lifted a weight in his life.

“Oh!” His mom looks pleased, and an unflattering amount of surprised, too, at Mikey having a friend. It’s been a few months. “It’s great to meet you, Misha.” She leans in to fix Mikey’s hair and whispers, completely audibly, “He’s cute.”

Mikey is going to retroactively un-come out to his entire family, and then he’s going to leave the fucking country and start a new life with no parents to embarrass him, Canada Day be damned.

“Thanks, mom, for that,” he says, pained, and spares a peek over at Misha – grinning hugely and obviously holding back a laugh, so he clearly did hear, fuck Mikey’s entire existence – then grabs him by the elbow. “We’ll see you after.”

Small graces: his mom doesn’t try to stop him as he tugs Misha down the hall, and neither do any of the family friends milling around. Mikey shuts the door to the basement behind them, jogging down the carpeted steps and feeling his way through the old den toward the light switch on the far wall. It’s dark, save for the outside porch lights shining in through the windows, illuminating the wall-to-wall shelves full of framed sweaters and team photos and medals from tournaments that barely mattered when Mikey played them and that sure as shit don’t matter now, even though his parents steadfastly refuse to throw them out. He supposes it’s intended as a nice gesture, rather than the ‘hello, darling firstborn child, enjoy these constant reminders of us investing tens of thousands of dollars into you and you being a massive failure’ that it is in practice.

He doesn’t waste time ogling them, just makes a beeline for the old computer desk, but Misha is staring at the trophies even with the dim light, stood behind the couch, running his hands along the frame of one of the team photos from peewee. “You played a lot of hockey,” he says.

Mikey wants to brush it off with something cool, _no shit?_ or _you don’t say, Ethnic Mikey?_ , but instead he just says, gruff, “Yeah.”

“You stopped?”

“Yeah,” Mikey says again, then hits the light switch, harder than he means to. “C’mon.” 

He drops to his knees to rummage through the filing cabinet drawer, next to the massive, practically-Jurassic modem from the desktop PC they never got around to getting rid of once laptops became a thing. Monitor’s still there and everything. He doesn’t really know what he’s looking for, in the drawer full of old tapes and CD-rom games and burned DVDs of home videos. He half-remembers his dad playing the song when he was little, remembers specifically the bright yellow label on the cassette, and that’s what he recognizes when he finally reaches the bottom of the drawer.

“Fucking holy grail,” he announces, holding up the tape triumphantly.

Misha, blessedly and finally distracted from the shrine to the rise and fall of Mikey’s nonexistent hockey career, comes and sits down next to him, leaning against the side of the desk. He holds out his Walkman, an invitation.

“It play out loud?” Mikey asks, pressing the tape into the little compartment.

“We can share,” Misha says. He lifts his headphones from around his neck, tilts them so Mikey lean in, stooping a little, and press one to his ear. It occurs to him, crouched by the old Ikea desk in the basement to listen to an oldass song he barely knows with a guy he barely knows, that the moment feels bigger than it has any right to.

“Ready?” Misha asks, and presses play without waiting for a response.

It’s funny, sort of- Mikey couldn’t have even hummed the song before, it was that sort of half-memory, but the drums and weird psychedelic guitar start up, low sound quality and all, and he feels like he’s a little kid again.

He watches Misha’s face real intently and at least somewhat creepily to try and make out his reaction. For a few seconds, stretched out like chewing gum well after the singer has made it through a few lines, the expression on Misha’s face is blank, thoughtful. Then-

“David Bowie,” Misha says, and he turns to look at Mikey too, without taking off the headphones. It looks sort of like he wants to laugh. “Your top secret, obscure outer space hipster mystery song is Space Oddity?”

“No, it’s- listen,” Mikey sings along, trying to catch up with the scratchy singing, “This is ground patrol to Major Tom.”

“Control,” Misha says, so soft Mikey has to move the clunky old headphones away to hear him properly. 

“What?”

“Ground _control_ to Major Tom,” Misha says. “That’s- the lyrics.”

He knows the song, is what he’s saying, Mikey realizes eons too late. Probably a lot of people know the song.

“Oh,” Mikey says, and somehow his brain still finds a way to feel brutally embarrassed, which, like, you’d think he’d be accustomed to crushing and humiliating failure by now, but turns out, nope, still feels like shit.

He goes to take the Walkman from Misha and pop out the stupid cassette with its stupid space song, but Misha grabs his wrist and holds him still.

“I’m listening,” he says, and there’s something on his face that Mikey doesn’t know what the fuck to do with, or, like, what it is, actually, but he just knows that he wants to keep that look there, because of him, so he stays sitting still, knee-to-knee with Misha.

It feels- big. It feels big the way music does, sometimes, like a heart-pounding song scream-sung with the boys before a game or the first time Mikey played music driving alone at night or right now, listening to David Bowie sing about outer space and float away in the end. Mikey didn’t remember that part. Space seems like a lonely thing, for Misha to like it so much.

The song trails off into nothing, just the clicking of the tape then quiet.

They’re sitting real close, their heads bent in together. Mikey watches Misha realize that at the same time as him. He doesn’t move. Misha doesn’t move either.

“If ever we were going to make out,” Misha says, still hushed. “Now seems like the time.”

“Yeah,” Mikey says, and stays still. His voice comes out real quiet. “Would it ruin the moment, d’you think?” 

Misha shrugs. Not a no. “It’s a nice moment,” he says, finally. 

“Yeah,” Mikey says, and when he breathes out, Misha’s dumb floppy hair flutters, and there’s something to it, something that makes Mikey somehow want to cry, like he’s the kind of guy to cry, ever-

He’s not a poet, Mikey’s never once been a poet. It’s fucking nice, is all, the two of them pressed together in his basement while the old people party upstairs, and neither of them even says anything, it’s just looking and looking like looking’s something important. Mikey wonders what Misha’s seeing when he looks back.

Can’t be that bad, whatever it is. He stays looking, and Mikey does too.

\---

They load up plates with appetizers and desserts from upstairs then beat a retreat back to the basement, where they can sprawl out on the old futon. Well. Mikey sprawls. Misha sits like a normal human, even though the couch is low enough that his spindly twig legs are all folded up, his paper plate balanced precariously on his knees.

“Know what’s weird?” he says.

Mikey chews a chunk of spinach puff, the good ones his aunt brings for every event. “You?” he says, then, “What’s weird?”

“You have all this,” Misha says, gesturing with his fork at the shelves around them, dipping under the weight of pointless trophies. “So like, clearly hockey is a huge thing for you, but you haven’t talked about it at all, even though usually jock-ish people don’t shut up.”

“Do I look like a fucking jock?” Mikey asks, then, pre-empting any response because it was mostly rhetorical and he doesn’t need any goddamn fat jokes, even though Misha doesn’t seem the type, “I don’t play anymore.”

“Why?”

“’cause unclogging toilets felt like it was my calling,” Mikey snarks, slumping more into the couch. One of the springs is digging into his back. “Like, why do you think, I was garbage.”

Misha does this humming kind of sound, like acknowledging without agreeing. Like Mikey being a shit hockey player is anything to agree or disagree with. Like that’s how facts work.

Mikey nudges his knee against Misha’s. Misha nudges back, ducks to set his plate on the floor and crosses his legs. “How come you were hiding at the party?” he asks, like they’re just going to switch to a new topic, even though it’s not, really. Maybe he knows that. “Actually.” 

Mikey shoves the brutalized remains of his spinach puff around his plate. Doesn’t mean to be as honest as he is when he says, “Hockey- it has this way, like, more than other sports, where it kind of becomes your whole life. Like, tournaments on Christmas and shit, you know, you get close to people. _Close_ , close.”

“Kyle Peters,” Misha says, answering his own question. Mikey knew he was smart.

“He was my best friend,” Mikey admits, his stomach twisting into one knot then another and another the way it tends to do when he thinks about Kyle. It’s not fair, like, has to be some kind of epic failure in the history of human evolution levels of not fair, that all it takes is a name to make him turn into a possum playing dead. Some pathetic little thing. All over a guy who was apparently enough of a fucking tyrant to physically bully people to the point where they still hide from him.

“Sorry I didn’t do anything,” Mikey says, awkward about it, because he can’t not be. “When he-”

“You weren’t there. You didn’t know,” Misha says, and Mikey shakes his head.

“I kind of knew,” he says, quiet. “How he was, or whatever. I just didn’t know you.” He adds, quick, “That doesn’t make it better,” because it doesn’t. You let someone have enough of you, you’re responsible for them. Certainly for the people they shoved into lockers.

“You guys aren’t still friends,” Misha says, slow, another question. Reasoning it out like a fucking physics problem.

“We were always, like- it was our thing since, like, first grade, we’re gonna make the NHL together,” Mikey says, because the words have been closed up for so long that he doesn’t think he could stop them if he wanted, now. “Then I didn’t make the cut one year.” He tears at the edge of his plate. “It was like- a bunch of stuff, like I’m heavy but not muscley enough, and I skate slow, and, like- I don’t know. I’m not good at a lot of shit, once I’m playing with people who are actually good.”

He blows out a breath. Misha is watching him, close, like how Mikey watched him when they were listening to the song. Mikey doesn’t know what he’s trying to see. Not like there’s much there.

“Didn’t get drafted for the O,” Mikey continues, keeping his voice frank. Factual, like he’s talking about someone’s stats instead of the shit that made him lose everything and everyone he planned on keeping. “Didn’t have a backup plan. I had to do summer school to even get in a shop class.”

Misha’s knee is pressed up against Mikey’s leg again. It’s been there a while, like an anchor.

“He didn’t shove me in a locker or anything,” Mikey finishes. “Just stopped texting back.”

It’s not a good ending to a story. Not even a good story in itself, because he’s pretty sure the same thing has played out a million times with a million peewee teammates of guys who make the show. A million irrelevant assholes. Only difference between Mikey and them is they probably weren’t stupid enough to think a first grade promise from a best friend counted as a life plan. Kyle hasn’t spared him a fucking thought since getting drafted, Mikey thinks. Mikey would bet his life.

“Sorry,” Mikey says again, roughly, and now Misha is the one who shakes his head.

“ _Fuck_ Kyle Peters,” he says, vehement enough that it summons this stunned laugh from somewhere deep inside Mikey, more a scoff than anything else. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Mikey tries, then, because it came out less than convincing. “Fuck that guy.”

Misha grins at him, crooked, and Mikey gets to pretend for a couple of seconds that he’s cured of his Kyle thing, that Misha forgiving him and agreeing with him and acting like Mikey’s basement futon during his parents’ increasingly rowdy old people party is a place he’s actually enjoying being is the point where things change for him, and the next time he goes to a rink he’ll magically be Wayne Gretzky and a scout will see him and then he makes the NHL and scores the Cup winning goal right in Kyle’s smug fucking face and is no one’s fat gay embarrassingly obsessed ex best friend ever again.

It's a really, really nice couple of seconds.

Not really real. Not the way Mikey still, in spite of himself, wishes – god, pathetically, just fucking _aches_ – for it to be. He’s not going to be a hockey player. Not going to be able to think about Kyle without hurting, let alone laugh in his face.

He is on the futon with Misha though, and Misha’s still giving him his pointy, understanding kind of smile, even knowing all the things Mikey isn’t.

That part is real.

Okay, Mikey thinks, then says aloud, again, firmer this time, “Okay.”

\---

It’s pitch dark out by the time they migrate to the backyard, to the old swing set over in the corner that’s been there so long it’s practically grown into the ground like roots. It’s on the cool side, for a July night, but Mikey plants himself on one of the kiddie-sized swings and Misha does the same.

The grownups’ talk is white noise from over on the patio, an accompaniment to the crickets’ chirping punctuated by an occasional loud laugh. Mikey’s a grownup too, he guesses, even though he’s pretty sure grownups probably don’t use the word ‘grownup’.

The chains of the swings creak warningly as they move, long-since rusted.

“What happens after this?” Misha asks. Always, with the questions.

Mikey drags his toes through the grassy dirt. “What do you mean?”

“I mean are we, like. Friends now?” He’s got a way of saying things, Misha does, like he’s not embarrassed. Like being embarrassed hasn’t crossed his mind.

“Do you want to be friends?” Mikey retorts, putting the ball back in Misha’s court, because fuck knows he’s learned his lesson about being the clingy one.

Misha dodges the question, a little, like maybe he’s learned a lesson or two as well. “You could text me,” he offers, oblivious to the way it makes Mikey’s heart do a somersault. “Or I could text you. If you wanted to.” 

“Okay,” Mikey says, all casual, then, “If you pull out a fuckin’ flip phone, I swear to literal Jesus-”

“Shut up,” Misha laughs, even though Mikey was only partly joking – the dude’s got a fucking cassette player, he’s clearly a technology freak – but thankfully just pulls out an iPhone. One from a couple generations ago, from how bulky it is, and Mikey remembers him referring to hockey as a rich people sport and wonders if Misha’s family is poor, wonders if Misha thinks Mikey’s family is rich from the size of their house or whatever. Realizes he doesn’t know Misha at all, really, his life or his background or who he is outside of music and physics and a sense of humour like barbed wire.

They swap phones. Mikey adds himself as a contact, sets his name as _ground patrol_ with a bunch of shit emojis because he can’t be a plumber if he can’t take some shit jokes, probably, then, when Misha is done adding himself, accepts his own phone back and tucks it into his pocket.

“Neither of us is going to text,” Misha says, matter-of-fact.

It takes more effort than it should not to physically flinch and fall off the swing. “Wow,” Mikey says, more stung than he’s got any right to be. One night. You can’t know someone in one night. Idiot. Can’t feel- “Fuck you too, I guess.”

“Not like I don’t want to,” Misha clarifies, and, as Mikey looks at him suspiciously, clarifies some more, “I obviously want to, but we literally met each other by hiding in a closet during a social event, we clearly aren’t good at making friends.”

Mikey, mostly mollified, doesn’t bother not returning Misha’s grin.

“What would we even say?” Misha asks, making a face. “’Hey, remember that time we hung out for hours on Happy Imperialism Day because we both suck too much to have actual plans’?”

Mikey plays along. “Remember that time we didn’t kiss in my basement ‘cause we were too busy listening to-” 

“- to ground patrol, yeah,” Misha says, and laughs. His hair falls into his face when he leans forward, and Mikey has to fight the urge to touch, to brush it back behind his ear. Something stupid like that. Misha’s got a good laugh. A weird laugh, all silent and scratchy and folds up his whole body ‘til he’s doubled over in the swing, but good.

Mikey looks away when Misha finally giggles himself to seriousness and sits up straight, so Misha won’t think he was staring, even though he was, but fuck if he’ll admit to it.

Mikey pushes off the ground and swings, back and forth. The swing’s too low to the ground for him to even stretch out his legs properly. He used to swing high enough to touch his toes to the hanging branch of the big tree. He can’t imagine ever being that little.

“You know you can actually hear what space sounds like?” Misha asks. He’s still holding his phone, never put it away once they added each other’s numbers.

“Space doesn’t have sounds,” Mikey informs him, because he’s watched the discovery channel.

“Celestial bodies emit radio waves,” Misha informs him right back. “You can hear what a star sounds like.” 

“Bullshit,” Mikey says, because it’s weird to refer to a star as a body like it’s a person, and weirder to think of those bodies making noise in the middle of all that nothing.

Misha shuffles his feet along the ground the scoot their swings close, typing away at his phone as he does. It’s not David Bowie, the sound he plays for Mikey, holding it up to his ear so it’ll be audible over the parents’ talking. It sounds, mostly, like-

“This is fucking static,” Mikey says, unimpressed. He doesn’t know what he expected stars to sound like. Something better. More special. Welcome to Mikey’s world, stars.

“I mean, sure, if you don’t know what it really is,” Misha says, unbothered. He’s holding the speaker of his phone to his own ear, now, looking vaguely rapturous. “I swear to god, I could listen to it all day.”

“You’re really, really fucking weird,” Mikey says, and it comes out about eighty thousand fucking times softer than he intends, and then their eyes meet, and then someone out front starts the fireworks.

Mikey jumps, startled, at the noise. It splits the night open, bathes everything in a colourful glow, even though, between the trees and the house, the fireworks themselves are just barely visible over top the roof. The cracking noise each one makes is loud enough and close enough that Mikey can feel it shaking right through his bones, the way music does, if it’s good enough music.

He turns to look back at Misha, to crack some dumb joke, probably, and they’re both saved the trouble of pretending to find him funny because Misha leans in and gets a hand in the collar of Mikey’s t-shirt and kisses him.

And, the thing is, for all Mikey’s jokes-

The only person he’s ever kissed, ever in nineteen years, is Kyle; the last tournament they played together on a team, and the whole thing already felt like a tragedy waiting to happen no matter how much Mikey tried to convince himself it didn’t.

“Ky,” he said, desperate, after he leaned across and kissed him, and what he meant was _don’t go away from me, don’t make me like everyone else not good enough for you, tell me I’m different._

“What?” Kyle asked, close enough that their noses were still touching, and Mikey could still taste Kyle’s spearmint gum breath and that fact felt like suffocating and drowning and being strangled to death all at once, because eleven years, they were best friends, Mikey was fucking obsessed with him, and it all came down to that second and Mikey couldn’t make himself say what he wanted to say, didn’t even know what he _wanted_ to say, and by the time he thought all that and was getting around to contemplating how to put it in words, Kyle got impatient – Kyle was always impatient – and pulled away.

The kiss – _the_ kiss, not _a_ kiss, because that’s what it’s been, for Mikey – was a goodbye, and a failure of one.

This kiss isn’t like that at all. Mikey didn’t realize kissing was allowed to feel _light_ like this, like the two of them might just float up, fuck the tiny swing set to hell, and brush past every single branch of the tree to go up and be with the fireworks. Maybe with the stars, and listen to their scratchy screechy noises.

Their noses nudge together. Mikey reaches up and tucks a piece of Misha’s hair back behind his ear. It’s soft, like Mikey imagined.

The fireworks are still going when they stop to catch their breath. Mikey was half-expecting the world to be silent.

“Knew you wanted to make out with me,” he says, like a dumbass, even though he’s holding onto the chain of Misha’s swing to keep him nearby, and Misha’s still got his fingers wound in Mikey’s shirt, maybe keeping him close too.

“It was the song that did it,” Misha says, very seriously, and Mikey snorts a laugh, tugs Misha in by his swing and kisses him again. Third time’s the charm, he thinks, or something like that, at least for tonight, what tonight has become; and if he’s still a little rusty then, for tonight, it doesn’t feel like something to be embarrassed about at all.

\---

\---

\---

The morning feels like it’s on the edge of surreal, the way mornings always do after big nights, everything bright and sleepy-slow as Mikey makes his way down to the kitchen. The dishes from the party are still in the sink, tupperwares of leftovers stacked at least four high on the counter and probably in the fridge as well.

Mikey wanders in, finds Sab already up. Still in her pajamas, but she doesn’t look particularly hungover or sleep-deprived, even though she didn’t get home ‘til near four from her friend’s place. Another genetic highway robbery.

“Good night?” Mikey asks, flicking the back of her head as he takes his regular seat and leans on the table, head in his hands.

“Yeah.” Sabrina yawns big enough to give Mikey a more detailed view of her tonsils than he’s ever wanted – his sister is disgusting – and doesn’t elaborate, shoving her cereal around its bowl. “You?” 

Mikey has to duck his head and fake his own yawn to disguise a grin as he thinks of kissing and kissing and kissing Misha, in the backyard then back in the house then in the car when he dropped him at home with exactly a minute to spare before his curfew. It was good. Good like Mikey either forgot or didn’t ever know things could feel.

“Hello-o.”

Mikey comes back to himself and swats Sabrina away as she waves a hand in front of his face, reaching over her to grab the box of cornflakes. He reaches in and fishes out a few of the dried berries.

“You’re so obnoxious,” she says, but it’s half-hearted, and they’re both too tired for bickering, so it fizzles. Mikey debates asking if she knows Misha the way he knew her. Asking what he’s like when he’s not getting barged in on in a closet at a party or trading secrets at midnight.

He doesn’t. Obviously, he doesn’t, just takes out his phone and navigates to the newest entry in his contacts, _ethnic mikey_ with a little star next to it.

 _Neither of us is going to text,_ Misha said.

Mikey gets it more today than he did last night. Last night, the kissing and everything before, was a good thing that was good, maybe the best thing Mikey’s had since hockey, and it was one night, self-contained and not involving a single person but the two of them. And it’s a tempting idea, the idea of leaving it at that and letting Misha keep his borrowed shirt and having a good thing to think back on, just one thing that Mikey didn’t get a chance to fuck up the way he fucks up everything else he’s ever wanted. He can’t deal with another Kyle. He just-

He can’t do that again.

Only-

He can practically see Misha giving him his most skeptical _are you kidding me_ look, like, _you think I’m anything like that asshole_?

And Mikey doesn’t, really. He doesn’t really at all.

It’s not a big romantic move, because Mikey doesn’t really do those. He just copies and pastes a link, the first playlist he finds called _The Best of the Dire Straits_ , and sends it as a text.

Nothing to lose, he tells himself, firm. You could never hear from this guy again and it won’t change the fact that you were a good enough person to kiss, to talk to for hours, and that in itself will make it worth it. He tried. Mikey’s still the kind of person to know how to try, and to fail, and to try again. To pick fight instead of flight. He can lose a good thing and it can still have been good.

He glances down at his phone, and, as he’s looking, three dots appear, the three dots that mean Misha is typing.

Mikey breathes again, and smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> \- normal kermit: make sure all your ocs are easily distinguishable from one another!   
>  evil kermit: give them the same name >:)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Dire Straits](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26462068) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods)




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